Recasting the Die
by PurpleBlaze
Summary: Recasting the Die (Or how to erase your fate, twice, in a thousand simple steps) An AU where Steve learns that Natasha is his biological daughter. A team-as-family gen fic. kid-Nat in Prologue, tween-Nat in chapter 1, story is Adult Nat


**Prologue (Or some backstory about how Steve learns about DNA theft the hard way)**

It started as you know it.

Steve Rogers flew a plane into a mountain. He went under the ice only to wake up to a world overrun with technology, aliens, and government secret agencies. Like he got sucked into a science fiction novel with no way out.

He settled as best he could into the world of SHIELD. He kept a list of things he missed out on. Multiple lists. Long lists. Even a Master List to categorize his other lists.

Mid-December, only a couple months after waking up, Nick Fury arrived at his bunk. Single-bed Shield rooms, for those lucky or important enough to live in one, came equipped with a sink and mirror next to the door.

Steve, standing at said sink and therefore suddenly within speaking distance of the Commander at the door, put down his razor and instinctively straightened to attention.

Military training is 90% muscle memory.

"At ease. This is your room agent," Commander Nick Fury said. Steve reached for his towel and wiped the remaining shaving cream off his jaw, leaving a few patches of un-trimmed 5 o'clock shadow.

"Commander, what can I do for you?"

He may be new to SHIELD and didn't know Fury well, but he could certainly guess that the commander wasn't one for making house calls.

Fury held out a folder, "classified" stamped redundantly all over. "We have a mission. I think you'll find pages 46 and 47 particularly interesting. If you feel you're capable of remaining uncompromised, you may join. We head out at 1700. Land in Stalingrad at 0218"

Steve reached out and took the proffered file. Glancing once at Commander Fury, he flipped through documents, photos, and photocopies until he landed at page 46. It was a spreadsheet with the details of some kind of DNA breeding program: Viable semen from a 'Donor X' combined with eggs from 'women of superior genes' grown in test tubes. Enhancer serum added at different intervals throughout the nine-month incubation period.

One successful trial. Female.

Steve flipped the page.

Page 47: biostats of Donor X: Steven Rogers.

And just like two months ago when he ran out to Times Square, and the world tilted on its axis with the absurdity of his new reality. The world tilted again. He had a daughter.

* * *

At 1700, as the quintjet took off, Steve had already been in the quintjet's hanger for over an hour. Impatient to leave, he poured over every page of the dossier.

The Red Room. Bringing up little girls to be spying assassins and killer seductresses.

SHIELD intel also procured a list of names and statuses for the girls in the program. It was horrifying the number of little girls' names marked "deceased". A parent's worst nightmare. Even a brand new parent.

Speaking of, he only knew her name and age. He rubbed his thumb over the words.

Natalia.

Age 8.

He had never put too much thought to children. From a sickly young man to a soldier, a white picket fence life had always been a background dream. If he had Peggy had a daughter, what would they have named her? Sarah for his mom maybe. He always liked the name Norma.

* * *

On a perfect SHIELD timetable, at 0218 the quintjet landed outside the Red Room facilities.

Although Steve and the other agents were quick and efficient, it was too slow.

Find her now. Find her now. The mantra rolled back and forth in his thoughts.

A young, new recruit sharpshooter, Clint Barton, took out the guards.

Find her now.

Agent Crisston slipped in and disabled an alarm.

Find her now.

They silently charged through the facility, splitting off and rejoining where necessary. The facility consisted of long, dim hallways with a thousand rooms.

In a concrete space with machines pushed up against every wall, he found two little girls hooked up to IVs and wires. One in a chair. One on a table. They had on black leotard tops and black shorts. Wide straps tied both down, the belts buckled against their thighs, arms, wrists, and ankles.

The agents spread out while he beelined to the little girl on the table, about nine.

Skinny. Hair chopped short.

Her face too pale. Lips ringed with blue.

Eyes open and sightless. Dead.

No. This wasn't… couldn't…

Two fingers to her small neck proved what he knew. He turned to the second girl. She looked older. 14 at least. He should ask her about her own welfare, but the shield agents were already checking her over, removing the sticky electrodes from her scalp.

"Who is this?" he rasped.

The girl stared at him, blank-eyed.

"Who is this?" he repeated.

Finally, she said, "Ty amerikanets."

Of course, she wouldn't speak English. He was about to turn for a translator when the girl in the chair pointed to the girl in the table and said, "Svetlana."

Steve dropped his head down and let himself breathe out slowly. It was too early in the mission to fall apart.

Ignoring everyone, he stood up and went back into the hall.

He encountered more agents telling him they found girls sleeping in a dormitory. All chained by the wrist to their beds. To early to think about that now. He pushed on to the dorm.

The girls in there, about half a dozen total, all had hollow eyes. No child should ever look this haunted… empty even.

"Natalia?" he asked. There was no reason for him to know Russian, but he cursed himself all the same. One little girl rubbing her newly-free wrist walked to the door to point down the hall. "Natalia is in gym 1," she said with a slightly accented intonation.

Steve couldn't even thank the girl. He ran.

He found a room that could only be a gym, and he knew it was the right place due to the burly man advancing at him. The man held a pistol that he pointed at Steve's chest.

Deep in the gym, like an actor downstage, Steve could see the outline of a girl.

Steve held his hands up. "Let's calm down. Do you know English?" he asked the Russian man.

The Russian, adorned with a silver mustache and black flak jacket, replied by pulling the trigger.

Instinctively, Steve was already on the ground, pulling his own gun and shooting at the Russian's chest. Training taught him to always aim center chest. The Russian went down and stayed there.

After making sure the man no longer posed a threat, Steve turned to the outline of the girl- she had remained quiet and still throughout the confrontation. The beams of the fluorescent bulb behind her cast her as a stark shadow. He stepped closer to see her fully.

She was a muscular little thing for her age, yet still long-legged and gawky. She had red hair that glowed in the light, a sharp chin, and sharper eyes that regarded him like a lion facing a herd of buffalo: fierce but outnumbered.

Natalia (for who else could this be?) stood near a balance beam, the outlines of parallel bars and other equipment behind her. She wore the same black leotard/shorts combo of the girls being experimented on.

He stepped closer and knelt before her. He didn't want to scare her, a big man who came in with a blazing gun. She looked him in the eye, emotionless. Was she afraid? Relieved? How could he even communicate with ? What was Russian for "hello"? He knew that one. He vowed to start taking Russian lessons immediately.

He held out a hand. "Khellou," he said softly.

She didn't take his hand, but she did say, "You don't have to try to speak bad Russian. I can communicate in your language." His eyebrows rose.

"You killed my coach."

"Yes. I'm sorry."

She didn't react. Didn't ask a question. He heard his backup arrive in the gym behind him. He pulled his hand back. Not reaching out to her or moving forward, he didn't want to scare her, he said, "You and the other girls are safe. We will take you with us and give you a good, happy life."

Natalia didn't react at all.

* * *

SHIELD got all the girls to a secret SHIELD Facility in Poland for processing, and Steve took Natalia back to the U.S. with the away team. It was quiet on the quintjet. Natalia sat straight and tall in her seat, eyes ahead, looking at him only when he talked to her.

He sat next to her. Offered her a bottled water which she accepted.

"Sooo... Natalia. How old are you?" He played with his own water bottle, peeling at the edges of the wrapper where the condensation weakened the label.

"You know how old I am. That is your bag tucked behind the blue duffel near the hangar door and it has all the files from the Red Room retrieved from the data breach last week." She said it as a fact.

Steve peeled the bottle wrapper further. "So no small talk then?"

"Small talk is for children."

That startled a laugh out of him. "Natalia. You are a child."

The corners of her mouth tightened and Steve was quick to add, "Or eight is considered a child. In most countries. In all civilized countries." Her lips were still tight. He added, awkwardly, "I'm sorry that you've had to grow up too fast... if you don't put yourself in the category of where a eight-year-old should be."

She was incredibly hard to read, but she seemed mollified enough to ask the first question she had since he found her in that cold gym in Stalingrad. "Why did you separate me from the other girls?"

Steve had no idea how to handle a potentially sensitive matter delicately. Or what the right way was. But he remembered when he was a sickly kid he always appreciated when doctors and adults were straight shooters. He had the feeling Natalia was the same way.

He unbuckled his seat belt and swiveled until he was kneeling in front of her, eye-level. She half-raised one eyebrow and leaned slightly back. When he reached to hold her hands with his she tucked them under her, so he settled for resting his hands on his knees.

"Natalia, do you know anything about your parents?"

"I was created by the Red Room."

When she didn't go on Steve filled in, "Yes, but they needed..." He paused. How much did an eight-year-old know? "DNA from a daddy and a mommy to make you." Steve rubbed his knees.

"I know what sex is Steve Rogers."

Ignoring that, Steve plunged, "Natalia, I'm your father."

He didn't know if he expected her to tear up, get excited, ask questions, hug him, punch him. What he got instead was her typical stoic face.

He waited for her to say something. Wanting so desperately to hug her but couldn't because she didn't know him. A fact that stung.

Finally she asked, "Was my mother an enhanced human too."

"How do you know I'm enhanced?" She indicated at his general physique like, 'well duh' and did not elaborate.

"According to the files, your mother was an athlete who turned to modeling. She's been a missing person for over a decade. But SHIELD, this organization, is looking for her."

That had been a sickening fact to read in The Black Widow Program dossier. The women whose eggs had been stolen to mix with his... specimen became all disappeared from existence- spirited away from their loved ones.

"So now you'll go home with me. And you'll get the childhood you never had." He looked at her face.

Emotionless.

"How does that sound?"

She shrugged.

* * *

They detained Natalia long enough to determine she posed no threat to society at her current age, but she'd be required to attend therapy sessions twice a week for the foreseeable forever.

Natalia was a solemn child. She noticed everything, could pick up on anything, did as she was told, but Steve never saw her crack a real smile. Polite smiles did not count.

Trying to make up for eight years of child abuse and seeing a real smile became Steve's two single-minded purposes in life.

He had money (more than enough to live comfortably for the rest of his life) from stocks and bonds Howard Stark left in Steve's name. He quit active duty Shield and started the process of looking for a place for him and Natalia to live. A process with no input from Natalia.

"What do you think?" he asked at their fourth house tour. She looked at hardwood floors. Looked giant kitchen with granite island dominating the center. Looked at the open floorplan. Looked at the private backyard complete with giant redwood porch and swimming pool. "If this is what you wish, purchase it." She sometimes worded things formally; he assumed it was some English-as-a-second language issue.

"Do you like to swim?" He pointed outside toward the pool as if she hadn't noticed it, which of course she had. He was just trying his darndest to act normal for his assassin/spy trained daughter.

She tilted her head but didn't answer the question.

Maybe she didn't understand, which of course she did. He didn't even know how many languages she was an expert in.

"Do you know how to swim?" He rephrased.

"Yes." was all he got from her. He bought the house.

* * *

Sometimes Steve thought his daughter was a robot.

She went to therapy and answered succinctly only what was asked of her. ("Give her time. She needs time to discover her identity," the therapist told him).

He enrolled her in school and she finished all her work in class, never made less than a 100% ("She learns quickly. She's exceptionally intelligent," the teachers said).

She never brought any friends home ("Natalia doesn't interact with her classmates any more than she has to," her teachers told him.)

He took her to church every Sunday, where she sat and stood with the congregation, held they hymnal open to the right page, and stared straight ahead, glassy-eyed. ("Give her time," the pastor said. "Sometimes we don't know God's bigger purpose. That's where faith comes in.")

"Do you want to take any classes?" He asked one night, scrolling down the website of Grace's Dance Academy. "Ballet? Jazz? Tap? Any kind of dance?"

She looked up from where she was reading a textbook in an armchair. "If you want me to."

"I only want you to if you want you to," Steve countered.

"I do not care."

* * *

"Is it weird that I want so badly for her to rebel?" Steve asked Clint Barton in the mess hall one day. He continued, "Is it weird I want her to cop an attitude with me just to show some darn emotion? Start smoking? At least that's an interest!

"She only watches the movies I put on for her. Only reads the books I give her. Only listens to the music I play for her."

"Remember to play her the classics. AC\DC. Poison. Huey Lewis," Clint said as he stabbed at his green beans.

Steve ran a hand through his hair. "I play a lot of U.S. top 40 pop. I figure she should be up-to-date with what the pre-teens are listening to."

Clint swallowed his fork full of beans and said, "You've probably heard it already, but it bears repeating: this takes time. She needs time and routine. And good role-models. And people who care about her. It will happen." He stabbed down at his food again. "You're a good dad. You are all of that to her."

Steve stirred his mashed potatoes. "What if I'm not enough."

Clint glanced away. "As someone who grew up with a terrible father, I promise you're enough." He glanced back as Steve was about to ask something and said, "But whattyda think about movie night tonight? I'll bring the popcorn."

Monday movie night became a tradition. If Clint or Steve were gone for work, they pushed it to the next available day.

It happened for the first time at one of these movie nights: she smiled.

He was in the kitchen waiting for the popcorn to finish. Nat and Clint sat on the couch watching the main characters break a flock of geese out of Animal Control.

Clint rambled, "This making the animal control guy the 'bad guy' just isn't working for me. He's a regular guy just doing his job. Just like me. Trying his best and just wants to clock out and go home…"

Steve glanced up and saw the holy grail. Nat was smiling! And the smile stayed there for Clint's whole rant.

"...And he really does want what's best for the birds. He even drops some pretty logical logic on us…" Steve reached for his phone and subtly snapped a picture. If other parents got their kids first laughs and walks on camera, then darn it, he wanted his kid's first smile.

Two weeks later came another first: Natalia asking for something she wanted. A strawberry milkshake to drink during movie night was a small request, sure, but from then on Steve made sure to always have strawberries, milk, and ice cream on hand.

The firsts kept rolling in. First interest: She asked if she could learn to play the flute at school band. Steve didn't know where that came from, but he happily bought a flute and every stupid accessory that came with it, including a music stand, every beginner sheet music at the store, and a cleaning kit with polishes and cloths.

"The Wind Ensemble is coming through DC," Phil Coulson mentioned one day in a meeting. "I could get tickets." Which is how Natalia and Phil Coulson started going to concerts together. Not just classical concerts, but pop artists, live jazz music, and Off-Broadway shows.

There was one memorable rock performance in an over-21 bar that Steve had reservations about, but Phil reassured him that he could get her in and it was the only place they played in DC. Natalia came home at 2am and blasted base from her room until Steve came in and took her speakers.

As she grew older, she grew more and more as a person. Steve almost hugged her the first time she rolled her eyes at him and muttered, "lame". (In her defense, two Disney Princesses (Jasmine and Belle) at a 12-year-old's birthday party with just him, Phil, and Clint in attendance was arguably lame, but he would do it all over again for the sass.)

She had favorite movies. Which Steve was glad for, but he was getting really sick of watching Fly Away Home and Ever After.

She finally grew into a real personality. Steve learned that she was a show-off. She quit the flute and asked to take dance and gymnastics. Steve suspected that she liked being the best and didn't like being average at the flute. At every dance recital, she got the solo dance number while the other girls were background chorus. (Versus 5th chair flute out of 12 in Band.)

Steve, Phil, and Clint went to every dance recital. Except for the last recital. But Phil would have made it if he wasn't near-dead. And that last recital was also where she got abducted and Steve didn't see her again until she was a renowned assassin who didn't know him from Adam.

But that is getting ahead of the story.

The invasion came first.

The Chitauri invasion changed everything. The Avengers became a household name. The resuscitated Red Room saw their creation, got greedy, and took her. It wasn't until six years later at the end of Clint Barton's arrow did any of them see her, in person, again.


End file.
